Stop Watching ‘The Walking Dead.’ You Hate It.

Hey there. How are you holding up? Do you need some soothing tea? Do you need to re-watch David S. Pumpkins? It’s important to me that you’re comfortable because we need to have a difficult conversation. You need to stop watching The Walking Dead.

I’m not saying this as a critic or a fellow fan. I’m saying this as a friend. I gave up the series halfway through Season One because the few episodes I saw did not meet my zombie horde expectations. It’s a dumb reason, but it’s my reason. I have never been a Deadhead and will likely continue to avoid the show. Maybe I’ll pick up the comics someday. Who knows? However, I have been an observer of pop culture for the seven years the series has been on the air, and I understand your pain, you masochists. It’s time to accept reality. It seems as though The Walking Dead has become a bad show, and you don’t like it.

Last week, criticism of the show’s season premiere dominated the internet. Vulture’s Matt Zoller Seitz wrote an excellent piece on how Negan’s (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) killing spree was indicative of the show’s now-empty violence. The A.V. Club’s Zack Handlen called the heavy-handed and heavy-hitting episode a new low of the series. Last year during Season Six, Decider’s Kat George called the series the most boring show on television. Though there are hundreds of Walking Dead recaps and thinkpieces out there, it’s becoming more and more difficult to find articles that don’t begin by immediately admitting the show kind of sucks now.

This isn’t merely critics being uppity. According to Variety, the show was responsible for 77 percent of all “crying” tweets on Twitter during its season premiere. The AMC series also drove 43.9 percent of all upset reactions on the social media site during the same time period. I know that Season Seven started on an emotional note. Someone big died, and then some really gross stuff happened. It makes sense this huge development would take over social media. However, The Walking Dead’s Season Seven massacre hasn’t elicited the same sense of horrified but accepting sorrow Game of Throne’s Red Wedding did. As far as I can tell, there has only been exhaustion and outrage.

There are some dissenters who actually liked the Season Seven premiere, like Decider’s Benjamin H. Smith who argued that we shouldn’t be so squeamish about death during our zombie apocalypse shows. That’s awesome for Smith, and I hope he continues to enjoy the series. But for several of you who started watching The Walking Dead when it was one thing and continue to watch, praying that it will one day surprise you and return to its former greatness, you need to stop. From what I’ve seen, The Walking Dead has proven it’s an expired show. It will only continue to disappoint you.

Sometimes shows expire, often because their networks push series past their natural storytelling conclusions. There are several shows that spent years sitting and rotting on our TVs, slowly decomposing into gross hollow husks of the original art we loved. I’ve sat through many seasons of expired shows, and I have never been better for it. I have seen all nine seasons of How I Met Your Mother, and I watched the televised disaster that was Scrubs’ final season. When it came to Glee, I wised up a bit, but that didn’t stop me from investing four seasons into the series. I watched Lost past the Smoke Monster, and I’ve seen every episode of The Office, even the really terrible ones that involved Jim and Pam fighting for hours. The point is, I’ve been burned before by good shows spiraling into chaos. As an outsider looking in, I’m begging you to save yourself this time. Break the mold and stop watching the thing you secretly hate. The world is already depressing enough without having to watch your favorite shows destroy themselves.